Success at first MSE led MareNet event
Money was as the top of the agenda at Marine South East’s inaugural MareNet event last month. The event, which was held at the Chichester Yacht club, included an interesting tour of BA Peters’ shipyard and attracted more than 40 delegates, and focused on helping companies increase their profitability. MareNet events are totally free for businesses to attend.
The theme of last month’s event was ProfitNet, a programme based on the idea of getting businesses that operate in similar environments to work together to identify and develop practical solutions to individual problems.
Within ProfitNet, businesses join a sector specific group and attend a facilitated session once a month. Experts are invited at the discretion of group members. The group is totally business led and driven by its members.
There was an excellent presentation on the ProfitNet model from Dr George Tsekouras, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Brighton.. The presentation included numerous examples of impressive results from around the world and more specifically from other ProfitNet groups in East Sussex.
This was followed by a very enthusiastic talk from Colin Monk, Pro Vice Chancellor of Brighton University, on the opportunities for marine businesses to work with Universities. He talked about three examples of successful partnerships through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme, the Rapid Prototyping work with Portsmouth and Brighton Universities and Brighton's creativity centres.
Both presentations stimulated a good number of questions from marine businesses. As a direct result of the MareNet event a Marine ProfitNet group will be established in the Chichester area, with their first meeting on 23rd May. For more information about joining the group, contact Nick Rodgers on 07983 443556 or n.rodgers@brighton.ac.uk.
The MareNet meeting also heard from Trevor Hayman, Associate Tax Director at Smith Williamson. He talked about the R&D Tax credits scheme, the application process, and the changes resulting from recent budgets. The presentation stimulated a number of questions from delegates, many of whom are now interested in applying for funding from the R& D tax credits scheme.
Graham Clarke facilitated an open forum discussion session at the end of the meeting to develop an understanding of the current needs and issues affecting the sector, so that these could be addressed at future meetings. These included:
• Skills and training issues
• Regulations in the Export sector
• Accessing grants; partnerships with universities
• UK Regulations regarding EC Directives for the marine sector
• Lean business improvement - office and manufacturing
• Supply chain issues - selling to large primes
• Opportunities for the 2012 Olympics
If you are interested in attending a future event, or are particularly interested in one of the above topics, please email sarah@marinesoutheast.co.uk
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